Chapter Eighteen #3
No one truly saw Mavis. Not the string of marks that followed in his wake, all of them content with the facade she presented them with, none caring to delve deeper.
Not even Rafe and Leif, who cared about her, yes, but had always demanded, from the first evening Rafe brought her up to the roof to train her to pick pockets, that she make herself strong enough not to become their weakness.
Arden, though, had been the first person who treated her vulnerabilities like treasures he was willing to fight for the honor of protecting.
Mavis shouldn’t have told him about that afternoon in the park—it was so long ago, she assumed the wound of it had healed, but talking about it now felt like it had only been bandaged, and with that bandage ripped off, Mavis’s weakness was exposed all over again.
Arden might have believed that her father selling her to Minstead was the biggest betrayal of her life, but it wasn’t.
She never expected more from her father than what he’d given her, after all, but that day in the park, those words had been a dagger to her heart.
It made no sense that Mavis would feel them as a betrayal—if her own father hadn’t owed her anything, Arden certainly didn’t.
Mavis supposed she’d been the one to betray herself, by believing in the illusions she’d created and having the audacity to indulge in dreams about a future with a man she had no business claiming.
Arden was closer to her now—had he moved or had she?
She heard the clink of his glass as he set it on the sideboard behind her, then he took the glass from her hand and placed it there too.
She wanted to protest—she still had a finger of whiskey left—but suddenly the whiskey didn’t appeal to her at all.
His breath whispered over her cheek like a caress. He still smelled like he always had, like warmth and mint and something unmistakably Arden. He was close enough now to crowd her vision, overwhelming her senses and driving out everything but him, and her, and the truth.
It wasn’t enough. It hadn’t been enough five years ago, and time hadn’t changed that. She told Rafe and Leif she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, and she was determined that Arden wouldn’t make a fool of her again.
“Arden,” she said, with every intention of pulling away from him, but he cut her off with a kiss, his mouth covering hers and stealing her half-hearted protest. His hand found the nape of her neck and anchored her to him, as if she needed anchoring, as if she wasn’t arching toward him, drawing him closer, leaning back against the sideboard and not caring that the sharp edge dug into her back.
This was nothing like the way he’d kissed her five years before, always polite and delicate, as if he feared breaking her.
But then, he had never kissed her, had he?
He’d kissed Arabella Strickland. This time, he was kissing her, claiming her.
The kiss wasn’t at all delicate, and there was nothing polite about the tongue slipping into her mouth, luring her deeper and making her dizzy with want.
And Mavis kissed him back just as fiercely, her hands fisting in the white cotton of his shirt before moving up to his shoulders and grabbing hold to keep herself steady.
Of the nine fiancés she’d had over the last five years, she had kissed a handful of them, but none had affected her like this, driving every thought from her mind and stirring a hunger in the depths of her belly.
When Arden finally pulled back a fraction of an inch, his breath ghosting over her parted lips, he pressed his forehead to hers and kept his eyes closed, his lashes a shadowed fan over his sharp, aristocratic cheekbone.
“Whatever lies there were,” he said, his voice coming out rough, “this was real.”
Mavis didn’t know if he meant just the kiss or the physical attraction between them, or if he meant something deeper altogether.
She was afraid to ask. Arden cupped her cheek, drawing her back to him for another kiss, but Mavis scrabbled for the dregs of her senses, splaying her fingers over his chest to hold him at bay, momentarily distracted by the rhythm of his heart beneath her touch.
“None of it’s real, Arden.” She pushed him back in the hope that putting distance between them would help to clear her mind, but it didn’t.
She knew she had to wound him to protect them both, but the next words she spoke still felt like razor blades in her throat.
“I thought you would have learned that lesson by now.”
Embarrassment and anger went to war on his face, but before he could respond, she grabbed her glass of whiskey and slipped away from him, downing the rest in a single gulp.
She was teetering on a cliff, and she knew if she looked at him in that moment, she would topple over and there would be no clawing her way back up.
Not this time. “You can see yourself out, I trust?”
Without waiting for an answer, she retreated down the hallway, though she lingered there in the shadows until she heard his footsteps withdrawing and the echo of the door closing across the suite.